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The article examines the role of religion in the revolt of the Netherlands which resulted in the pluralistic structure of the new nation. Until the late 1560s the revolutionary movement consisted of loosely structured, rather isolated small groups with around them larger groups of supporters. It has been shown that in the earlier sects and groups of heretics the leaders were often people of modest background, coming from the lower-middle classes and the working classes. Although their status was probably somewhat higher than that of most of their followers, they were not very acceptable to other groups of the population. In the emerging Calvinist groups, the leaders increasingly consisted of merchants and learned people. It was only natural that part of the leadership of the revolutionary movement would fall into their hands. In the meantime a certain institutionalization took place. The religious movement developed from a great variety of loosely structured sects into an established church. The survival of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands was not only a matter of tolerance, or rather of inability on the side of the Calvinists to impose upon others their religious convictions. There has also been certain inner dynamics at work among the Catholics which in part can be explained by the operation of the same determinants which caused the spread of Calvinism. Although those who remained Catholic were exposed to more or less the same conditions of structural conduciveness and structural strain as well as in a certain degree to the same new belief systems, other precipitating factors and especially a different way of mobilization for action has been operative among them.

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