Feuillants, a branch of the order of Cistercians, founded in France in 1577 by Jean de la Barriere, abbot of the monastery of Feuillant, in the diocese of Rieux, Languedoc, for the stricter observance of the rules of St. Benedict, and declared independent by Sixtus V. in 1586. It received originally a very severe discipline, its members being obliged to go with naked head and feet, to sleep upon planks, and to eat on their knees. The rules were subsequently greatly relaxed, and the order spread over France and Italy. It was distinguished by the part which its members, especially the preacher Bernard de Montgaillard, called Le petit Feuillant, took in the civil wars of France in the time of the league. After having been the centre of numerous agitations, the Feuillants of France were in 1630 separated from those of Italy. Their costume was a white robe with-out a scapular, and a white cowl. De la Barriere founded at the same time a female order of Feuillantes, whose convent was first near Toulouse, and afterward, by invitation of Anne of Austria, in Paris. The severe discipline to which the members of this order at first subjected themselves caused the death of many of them, and was reprimanded by the pope.

The order lasted till 1790.-In the French revolution a club founded by Lafayette, Sieves, and others, at first called the company of 1789, and opposed to the Jacobins, was known as the Feuillants, from their meeting in a convent of the abolished order. In March, 1791, it was broken up by a mob.