Feuillans, CONGREGATION OF, a reform of the Cistercian order, remarkable as forming part of the great religious movement in the Roman Catholic Church during the 16th century, contemporary with and probably stimulated by the progress of the Reformation. The author of this reform was Jean de la Barrière, abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Feuillans in Languedoc (20 miles south-west of Toulouse), who, painfully struck by the relaxation of its discipline, laid down for himself a new and much more austere course of life, in which he soon found many imitators and associates among the brethren of his order. The rule thus reformed was, after considerable opposition from the advocates of the old rule, approved, with certain modifications, by Pope Sixtus V., the reformed congregation, however, being still left subject to the authority of the abbot of Cîteaux; and a convent was founded for them by Henry III. in the Rue St Honoré, Paris. The subjection to the abbot of Cîteaux was removed by Pope Clement VIII. in 1595; and Urban VIII. in 1630 separated the congregation into two branches, one for France and the other for Italy, each under a distinct general. The rules of both these branches were subsequently modified about the middle of the same century.
The celebrated revolutionary club of the Feuillans took its name from this order, whose convent in the Rue St Honoré was its meeting-place. It was founded in 1790 by Lafayette, Siéyes, Larochefoucauld, and others holding moderate opinions, but it soon fell before the devouring fire of revolution. At length, on the 28th March 1791, the assembly in the cloister was forcibly dispersed by a raging mob. In October 1791 the extreme right and the right in the Legislative Assembly were often called Feuillants.