Spring is a dependency injection container that manages the lifecycle and dependencies of components in an application. It supports loading configuration from XML files located in the classpath or file system using application contexts like ClassPathXmlApplicationContext or FileSystemXmlApplicationContext. Spring provides modules for aspects, data access, messaging, and testing that add functionality beyond the core container. Dependency injection allows objects to have their dependencies provided at creation rather than creating them directly, which makes the code loosely coupled, readable, and easy to test.