The Letter of Egilbert of Trier (circa 1085 AD)
[Nock] The Regensburg Epistolae Rhetoricae of the Clm 14596 (saec. xii), for the first time completely edited by Fickermann (pp. 259-382), originated as a collection probably about 1085. The author might have been connected at one time with the cathedral of Verdun, Bamberg, or Regensburg. The Munich manuscript, however, came certainly from the city on the Danube. The collection as such differs from others of the Salian period in contents and nature. It is a fictitious correspondence of thirty-one letters (except the first eight epistles, edited separately in the Appendix, pp. 368-382), and deals with such issues as simony, celibacy, and the investiture of ecclesiastical offices, or with scholarly rhetorical and logical questions. All the letters are written by the same unknown author, who was an even greater Ciceronian than Meinhard of Bamberg. The Disputationes Tusculanae, used by him in about one hundred instances together with other philosophical and rhetorical writings of Cicero, determine his moral philosophy. His rhetorical verbosity frequently tails off into platitudes which betray an intellectual level by no means exalted. Regardless of these facts, the Regensburg Rhetorical Letters are good historical witnesses of mediaeval morals and pre-scholastic thinking. Fickermann's edition is a masterpiece of the difficult art of publishing such a complex text.
(Nock, Speculum, 1951, p. 503)
[Robinson] Letters 8 and 10, however, seem to differ from the rest of the Regensburg corpus in being more circumstantial and possessing more of the character of actual communications. Both deal with issues which are commonly discussed in the Libelli de lite: letter 8 with the authority of canon law, with simony and celibacy, and with the reinstating of a deposed priest; and letter 10 with the undesirability of lay control over the priestly office and with bad prelates. Both letters are directed to a man who has been elected to an ecclesiastical office; and in letter 8 it is evident that the recipient is the kinsman of the sender and seeks consecration from him. In neither letter are names of persons or places specified; but Fickermann suggested that the insistence in letter 8 that canon law prohibits the election of a bishop to a see whose own bishop is still alive but a fugitive, indicates that the recipient of letter 8 must be an imperialist anti-bishop; while the request for consecration must be connected with Bishop Theoderic of Verdun's long delay in consecrating his kinsman, Archbishop Egilbert of Trier. Fickermann, therefore, wished to interpret letters 8 and 10 as part of an actual correspondence between Theoderic of Verdun (circa 1047-1089) and Egilbert of Trier (d. 1101 AD).
(Robinson, The 'Colores Rhetorici' in the Investiture Contest, 2020, p. 232)
Grantley
[R. Brown] Fickermann has recently raised the possibility that in fact, he [Augustine] did know of the Comma [1 John 5:7] but rejected it (and for that reason never quoted it). Fickermannn points to a hitherto unpublished eleventh-century text which says that Jerome considered the Comma to be a genuine part of 1 John - clearly a memory of the Pseudo-Jerome”Prologue [to the Catholic Epistles]".
HIT:
● [Letter no. 8] St Jerome argued that that verbal repetition [replicatio] in the [first] Epistle of John — ”And there are three that bear witness, the Father, the Word and the Spirit”— was established as certain. St. Augustine, on the basis of apostolic thought and on the authority of the Greek text, ordered it to be left out. (Letter No. 8, Lines 3-10, from Egilbert of Trier to Theoderic of Verdun, in Regensburg clm 14596; Fickermann, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 14596; Fickermann, ed. Die Regensburger rhetorischen Briefe, p. 306; Translated by Deborah Adlam, 2011)
○ Latin: Replicationem illam in epistola Iohannis:”et tres sunt qui testimonium dant, pater et
verbum et spiritus", beatus Hieronymus ratam esse astruit, beatus vero Augustinus ex
Apostoli ex sentential et ex Grecę linguę auctoritate demendam esse prescribit. (Regensburg
clm 14596; Fickermann, ed. Die Regensburger rhetorischen Briefe, p. 306)
(Brown, The Epistles of John: Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary, 1982, p. 785
. Note though that Anton Pegis is not claiming any direct Augustine citations of 1 John v:7 .. nor is Aquinas using Augustine in any type of textual analysis referencing manner.