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The article investigates the process of transformation of customary legal norms regarding the prosecution of witchcraft into codified legislation of European states in the 16th-18th centuries based on the analysis of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532), the English Witchcraft Acts (1542, 1563, 1604), the French practice of the Paris Parliament, the Edict of Louis XIV (1682), and the Prussian Edict (1714). The aim of the research is to trace the changes in the legal foundations of witchcraft prosecution during the transition from judicial custom to legislative regulation, the procedural mechanisms, and the qualification of acts related to witchcraft. It seeks to determine the cyclical nature of legal evolution: legitimization through codification, unification of procedural norms—delegitimization through procedural reforms, which represents a characteristic model of the development of criminal law from medieval norms to legal norms of the modern era. The methodological basis of the research is a comparative legal analysis of the processes of secularization of jurisdiction, unification of procedural norms, and differentiation of criminal offenses in various European legal traditions. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of gradual decriminalization through the tightening of evidential standards and the role of the enlightenment legal doctrine of C. Tomasi and C. Beccaria. The novelty of the work lies in the reconstruction and justification of the "cyclical model" of legal evolution in the realm of witchcraft prosecution: legitimization through codification and unification of procedure is replaced by delegitimization through procedural reforms and increased demands for evidence, allowing for a new description of the mechanism of the decline of criminal prosecution for witchcraft without an abrupt abandonment of the corresponding norms. The results of the study reveal that the codification of witchcraft norms was heterogeneous and was accompanied by: 1) secularization (redistribution of competencies and changes in the basis of criminal prosecution); 2) unification of procedural rules and a simultaneous increase in the significance of formal procedures; 3) differentiation of criminal offenses, which led to a change in the "boundaries" of punishable acts; 4) gradual decriminalization, which was implemented not through direct repeal, but through the tightening of evidential standards and procedural reforms; 5) identification of the role of enlightenment legal doctrine (C. Tomasi, C. Beccaria) as a factor in changing criminal law policy.