Forbidden when accessing archive.php in cron (no replies)

I'm running Piwik in a subdomain on shared hosting. All is working fine, but the archiving could not be executed via cron job (possible only by web cron). Calling that page in a browser showed the message:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /... /misc/cron/archive.php on this server.

It turned out that archive.php can be accessed and executes properly if I modify the .htaccess file in the /misc folder and remove

<IfModule !mod_access_compat>
<IfModule mod_authz_host.c>
Deny from all
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

What are these lines for, are they essential or can I keep the .htaccess without them? I'm not sure if I can convince my hoster to disable that module mod_authz_host.c just for me...

Thanks!


EDIT: Forgot to mention that DNS go via Cloudflare, in case that it is relevant.