The article deals with the question of the meaning-forming role of verbal units as one of the means of expressing the moral ideal in the Russian original hagiography of the 19th-20th centuries. The relevance of the study is due, on the one hand, to the lack of study of the texts of the Synodal period, in contrast to the hagiography of the previous centuries, as well as to the importance of considering the formal and substantive side of such texts through the prism of the linguistic embodiment of significant everyday meanings and phenomena. Attention is paid to the distinction between the concepts of “Holiness” and “moral ideal” in relation to hagiography. On the basis of the studied texts, a classification of toposes is proposed, aimed at the expression of significant hagiographic constants (Orthodox ethical postulates and types of Holiness), among which there are general, universal topos, relevant to the image of any ascetic, specific, relevant to a certain type of Holiness, and individual, characterizing a particular hagiographic hero. The regularities of the functioning of verbal word forms in the context of the explication of a topos are revealed. The specificity of lexico-grammatical and expressive-stylistic semantics of linguistic units in the lives of saints is noted. As a result of the study, conclusions are made about the functionality and semantic load of verbal means representing sainted type of Holiness.