Orthodox churches were allowed to raise taxes among their communities; this led to a position where priests would pay very large amounts—to both church superiors and Ottoman officials—to get a senior post, expecting that the cost could be amply recouped from tithes.
However, it was his knowledge in canon law as both a lawyer and a clerical operate that most likely won him in 1090 the position as successor of the previous Bishop of Chartres (who either had been removed from his position or had left it after a simony scandal).
A rehearsed reading of the Return from Parnassus, or The Scourge of Simony was performed at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London, on Sunday 6 December 2009 as part of their Read Not Dead series.
His first official act was to burn, in the presence of the assembled clergy, the anathema which Boniface II had pronounced against the latter's deceased rival Dioscurus on a false charge of simony and had ordered to be preserved in the Roman archives.
There were many chapters of the details of tithing as well as now obscure problems such as, the income from a glebe, Jus patronatus and Simony.
King Childebert was urged by the pope to assist Virgilius in exterminating simony from the Churches of Gaul and Germania.