The crustal seismic activity in southern Italy during the last three centuries has been analyzed in order to confirm or disprove the evidence of a northward migration of earthquake epicenters from Calabria towards southern Apennines and Irpinia that we have found in a previous work. The results suggest such a migration to be statistically significant at a velocity of about 13 km/yr. This, in turns, stands for the existence of stress propagating northward along the Apennine axis. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995