Semi-analytical theory of a long set of X-ray compound refractive lenses (CRLs) based on recurrence relations is developed further. The geometrical aperture, angular divergence of incident radiation and source size were accurately taken into account. Using this theory it is possible to calculate the width of the rocking curve of a long (40.7 cm) Be CRL which coincides with experimental data obtained earlier. By this approach the transverse coherence length for the X-ray beam after passing a set of CRLs of arbitrary complexity has been estimated. It is shown that at the focus this coherence length is equal to a diffraction-limited beam size (beam size in the case of a point source) and has minimal difference with the real beam size. research papers J. Synchrotron Rad. (2018). 25, 1634-1641 V. G. Kohn Rocking curve and coherence properties for X-ray CRL 1641 Figure 5Distance dependence of the beam size for a point source (black curve 1), for a real source (red curve 2) and a transverse coherence length (blue curve 3). See text for details.