A method and apparatus for performing virtualized parsing of an XML document. A document is divided into multiple segments, which may correspond to separate packets containing portions of the document, disk blocks, memory pages, etc. For each segment, a processor operating within an XML accelerator initiates parsing by identifying to a hardware parsing unit the document segment, a symbol table for the document and a location for storing state information regarding the parsing. Each segment is parsed in sequence, and the state information of the parsing is stored after each segment is completed, for retrieval when the next segment is to be parsed.