I am sure that the above question has a straightforward answer but I couldn’t easily find it (neither in the documentation nor on stackoverflow.com)
I got the notion that a BeanFactory/ApplicatioContext can be initialized with several bean configuration files. Is that so? And, if it is how can it be done?
See section 3.2.2.1 in the Spring Reference documentation. This describes how a configuration file can be split into separate configuration files that can then be imported into your main configuration file.