In this exhaustive study Gaëlle Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard explores the fertile intersection between Paulinus of Nola's complex thinking about church building and monuments and the actualisation and character of his own construction projects realised at Cimitile/Nola (and elsewhere) in the early years of the fifth century. Her analysis insistently bridges Paulinus' literary representations of the martyrial complex and the archaeological evidence yielded up at the site. The book is organised as running commentary upon three texts that, because of their first-hand reportage of the construction and buildings of the Campanian pilgrimage centre, have ineluctably drawn the attention of archaeologists and art historians: Paulinus' ep. xxxii, addressed to Sulpicius Severus, here dated to 403, and the Natalicia composed for the January festival of St Felix in the years 403 and 404 (carm. 27, 28). Commentary upon these same works was the heart of R. C. Goldschmidt's pioneering Paulinus' churches at Nola (1940), while Tomas Lehmann's indispensable Paulinus Nolanus und die Basilica Nova (2004) devotes most of a long chapter (pp. 148–235) to the same end. These scholars, however, were primarily concerned to use the literary sources to augment the archaeological record. Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard elucidates the manifold ways in which Paulinus' remarks on building patronage and his descriptions of monuments express his spiritual and pedagogical ideals. For her, the texts in question are monuments in their own right. Their ‘architectural’ unity and harmony, regardless of their conformity to the physical reality of the site, buttress their author's desire to transcend the limits of realistic description in the interest of loftier aims. In Paulinus' mind, building ‘pour Dieu’ was, Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard contends, a spiritually-charged act, analogous to God's edification of the purified human heart. Consequently Paulinus saw churches, courtyards and their decorative elements as laden with symbolic and allegorical meanings. Paulinus' descriptions, then, whether the carmen epigraphicum he composed for the apse of Cimitile's Basilica Nova (ep. xxxii.10 at pp. 101–25) or his verses portraying the light-flooded courtyard separating that church and the Basilica Vetus (carm. xxviii.28–52 at pp. 381–405), were edifying discourses that explained the polysemic messages inherent in pictorial images, the play of light and architectural forms. If the apse mosaic, for example, symbolically expressed the mystery of the Trinity, the luminescent atrium could be thought to allude not only to this mystical unity but also to the spiritual illumination of the faithful who crowded it. In highlighting Paulinus' conception of the spiritual and pedagogic compatibility of texts as monuments and monuments as texts, Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard has hit upon a happy theme and one that has the potential to resolve many difficulties of interpretation arising from comparison of the literary and archaeological records at Nola/Cimitile. This argument, however, often fades from immediate view. Vexing problems of archaeology and architectural reconstruction are pursued at length. Lexical, literary and art historical discussions may lead far afield. The yield is often fruitful and the insights novel. Yet the commentary format, which facilitates such pursuits, also handicaps the thesis by encouraging postponement, repetition and cross-referencing. Nevertheless, Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard has produced an erudite and important study with broad implications for both late antique literary studies and archaeology.