What is "abnegations"

Usage examples of "abnegations".

He prayed without coherent words, for all those caught between right and expedient, between duty and conscience, between the affections of earth and the abnegations of heaven: for Jovetta de Montors, for her son, murdered quite practically and coldly to clear the way for a coup, for Robert Bossu and all those labouring for peace through repeated waves of disillusion and despair, for the young who had no clear guidance where to go, and the old, who had tried and discarded everything: for Olivier and Yves and their like, who in their scornful and ruthless purity despised the manipulations of subtler souls: for Cadfael, once a brother of the Benedictine house of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury, who had done what he had to do, and now waited to pay for it.

And yet here, in the rain forest, the natural architecture of sun, and shade, and growth, seems a vital celebration of life and its glory, not a consequence of aberrations and the madness of abnegations, not an invention of dismal men who have foresworn women, even slaves, and certain vegetables, and live by parasitically feeding and exploiting the superstitions of the lower castes.