The few privileges strictly necessary for observing the Jewish rites, privileges which the last Roman Emperors had allowed to be maintained, were naturally upheld by those Visigothic kings who did not propose to abolish Judaism altogether, that is to say, by all the Arian and some of the Catholic kings. But all Jewish ceremonies were proscribed under severe penalties by those kings who compelled the Jews to opt between either baptism or exile. Under the system established by the first converting kings, any Jew who refused to undergo baptism was liable to serious punishment. For him the question of observing Jewish rites simply did not arise. As for the baptized Jew who observed these rites, he incurred the rigours of the laws directed against Christians who practised Judaism.
Abandoning that system, Recesswinth refrained from imposing upon the the Jews the alternative of either accepting baptism or exile, but he prohibited the exercise of their religious rites. The penalties were the same for anyone transgressing that prohibition, be he a Jew or a baptized Jew—the death penalty by fire or stoning, or, if pardoned by the king, enslavement for life and forfeiture of all the offender's property.