Plato used the voice of Socrates to raise the alarm about the perils posed by the invention of writing and of reading. In his dialogue Phaedrus, Plato denounced writing as inhuman and warned that writing weakened the mind and that it threatened to destroy people’s memory. Also the invention of the printing press was at its time perceived as a threat to European culture, social order and morality. “Ever since they began to practice this perverse excess of printing books, the church has been greatly damaged,” lamented Francisco Penna, a Dominican defender of the Spanish Inquisition.