at org.springframework.asm.ClassReader.<init>(Unknown Source)

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
**at org.springframework.asm.ClassReader.<init>(Unknown Source)**
at org.springframework.asm.ClassReader.<init>(Unknown Source)
at org.springframework.asm.ClassReader.<init>(Unknown Source)
at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.SimpleMetadataReader.<init>(SimpleMetadataReader.java:52)
at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.getMetadataReader(SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.java:80)
at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.CachingMetadataReaderFactory.getMetadataReader(CachingMetadataReaderFactory.java:101)
at org.springframework.core.type.classreading.SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.getMetadataReader(SimpleMetadataReaderFactory.java:76)
at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassUtils.checkConfigurationClassCandidate(ConfigurationClassUtils.java:70)
at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.processConfigBeanDefinitions(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:253)
at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.postProcessBeanDefinitionRegistry(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:223)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(AbstractApplicationContext.java:630)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:461)
at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>

The exception you see is not very likely to be cause by invalid Spring configuration but your classpath setup. This feels like a version incompatibility regarding the ASM libraries and Java 8. The ASM version, Spring 3.2 depends on is known to be incompatible with Java 8.

Thus, if you want run your code with Java 8, you need to use a recent Spring 4.0 version