DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS fails with ORA-01760 illegal argument for function

This is just a reminder in case I'll stumble upon this problem again in the future.

Oracle Database 19c Enterprise Edition Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production
Version 19.21.0.0.0

I was trying to execute something like this:

begin
 DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS(
  ownname => ...,
  tabname => ...,
  cascade => TRUE,
  options => 'GATHER AUTO'
 );
end;

ORA-01760: illegal argument for function

As described in this excellent post-mortem analysis made by Jonathan Lewis, I believe there is a combination of factors that causes the problem, certainly I do have a materialized view referencing the table being analyzed, but may be the cascade or the specific options also play a role in this bug that seems to span 20+ years of database versions without a definitive solution.

Jonathan also mentions a workaround fixing the problem, which worked at least in my case, that is issuing:

ALTER SESSION SET QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED = FALSE;

See message translations for ORA-01760.