What is the early legal concept of witchcraft?

First Answer:

Since the beginning of the Catholic church, the concepts of witchcraft have always been illegal, taking in the concepts of the grand inquisition and the Salem witch trials(although Salem was a puritan town) Witchcraft would have been deemed casting hexes, making curses, or the result of a jealous neighbor. Witchcraft was usually punishable by burning at the stake, unless you aply Demitriesz Policy, which follows...

Different Answer:

There is a concept of a witch, which is dealt with very briefly in a couple of places in The Bible, but in insufficient detail to determine what, precisely, is meant. The term in the Bible is sometimes translated as "poisoner," and clearly cannot be a "star gazer," as the wise men from the East who gave presents to the infant Jesus were of this type, and were acceptable.

Laws about witchcraft existed from the Early Middle Ages, but there was a great variety of them. Some countries had laws forbidding witchcraft, with penalties for practicing it. Other countries had laws that recognized witchcraft as a superstition, and considered the execution of a person for witchcraft as murder. The Kingdom of the Franks, the Kingdom of Lombardy, and the Carolingian Empire all regarded execution of accused witches as a capital crime, so anyone who burned a witch at the stake could be executed for it.

In later times, there were investigations of witchcraft, and these lead to the first book on the subject of identifying witches being published, shortly after the Middle Ages ended. The witch hunts came after that.

There is a link below to an article on witch hunts, where more information can be found.