This is a mini-version of a sample analytic paper based on Suger. While much shorter and much less developed than your own papers, it should serve as an example of how one states a theme and then backs it up with arguments and examples. (I've noted a couple of places where one could insert more analysis, and throughout this would need to be fleshed out with more examples. A real paper would also have more quotes.)

Louis as Warrior

Suger's portrayal of Louis VI was a portrayal of a warrior-king, one who led his troops vigorously and in person until his failing health prevented him from doing so. As much as Suger admired the king, however, and as much as he praised the king's successes against his enemies, he had serious misgivings about whether constant fighting was the right occupation for a Christian king.

Louis is introduced in Suger's biography as a youth, one who worked hard at his military training when most boys his age were too full of "idleness" to do so (p. 25). This characterization of the young Louis both sets the tone for much of Suger's subsequent account and draws a clear--if not explicitly stated--contrast with old King Philip. Once this youthful warrior became "king-designate" as Suger terms him, he spent his time, at least according to Suger, in a series of pitched battles against the castellan lords of the region, forcing them to recognize his authority and to stop their attacks on the defenseless. Once he was crowned, the pattern continued, even if his battles took his further afield, such as down into the Auvergne (p. 133).

[In a real paper, lots more examples and discussion would follow here.]

On the one hand, Suger found much to praise in these battles. Not only did he personally approve, he indicates, but God himself approved. Louis's battles are said to have been won with divine favor. One castle the king destroyed looked afterwards as though it had been struck with a "divine curse" (p. 103). Louis's wars were typically framed as just wars, against men who could be characterized as "devils through and through" (p. 88). Both in describing the beginning of Louis's kingship and in recounting the instructions the dying king gave on his deathbed to his heir, Suger stresses that his battles were fought against those who oppressed the churhes and the poor, that is people who could not defend themselves (pp. 62, 154).

And yet Suger could not describe such constant fighting as a simple good. One of his most telling scenes is his account of Louis's attack on the city of Chartres (p. 118). In his desire for vengeance against Count Theobald, the king was ready to burn down the city, including the cathedral and the houses of innocent townsmen. It took the intervention of the Virgin herself, through her relic which the local clergy brought out, to stop the king's attack on the city. In this case, Suger does not shrink from showing that Louis was clearly in the wrong.

[In a real paper, I'd probably add material here where Suger suggests that the whole kingdom would have been in serious trouble if Louis had gotten himself killed, which he almost did on multiple occasions. In addition, I'd point out the terms like "fury" and "vengeance," which Suger uses a lot, were words describing sins, as he knew perfectly well. I'd also hint that some of the sins for which he confessed on his deathbed may well have been sins of killing people.]

Suger suggests a possible solution to this dilemma in his account of Louis's response to an invasion from the German Empire. He summons not just his knights but all the great lords from the entire kingdom, even Count Thebald, with whom he had been at war himself (p. 130), making this a true war between nations, rather than a war between the king and some trouble-makers. Saint Dionysius, patron of Suger's monastery, is as ready to fight for France as are the knights (p. 128). The Germans, Suger makes clear, are as much in the wrong as such petty tyrants as Thomas of Marle or Hugh of Puiset had earlier been. And yet the great French-German war never occurs! According to Suger, the Germans withdrew quickly when they recognized they could win no easy victory. This was the way Suger thought battles should be fought: military preparation, bravery and stalwartness, yet no actual bloodshed. It was "superior to an actual triumph in the field" (p. 131). Still, Suger certainly recognized himself that this particular confrontation was an unusual case, and if the dilemma of being a warrior-king while being a good Christian could be resolved in this case, the situation was unlikely to be often repeated.

Overall, Suger's praise for the his king's military abilities indicates the central value he put on having a brave king who was not afraid to fight and who had the strength and ability almost always to win. And yet Suger, as a churchman himself, could not entirely reconcile himself to Christians killing Christians, even in the cause of justice. His panegyric to Louis carries within it a strong suggestion that even in a sinful world where fighting is necessary, that fighting can never be entirely justified.

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