ABSTRACT
The general historian, on the other hand, can only understand Knox's impact on events by placing Knox in his context. Even when an exile Church had been received into a German city, as the French were at Wesel and Frankfurt, anxieties over the theology of the Communion continued to trouble hosts and guests alike. The French congregation at Frankfurt was riven by the most dreadful discords before the departure of its pastor Valérand Poullain late in 1556. John Knox arrived in Frankfurt from Geneva in the autumn of 1554 at the request of the English exiles to serve as a minister to the congregation which had settled there in the summer. Knox's adversaries at Frankfurt, Richard Cox, Thomas Lever and the rest had their reasons for their own stubborn defence of the English liturgy, as emotive and compelling as those which inspired Knox, though not perhaps quite so consistent.
